My Secret Meeting Prep Hack

Helping elevate the people and profession of Sales by sharing authentic conversations, practical tips, expert advice, relevant tech and real-world lessons from my experience selling every day. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday. 

This is the last (unofficial) weekend of the summer.  I hope you’re enjoying it.

I’m down in Newport, RI, celebrating a friend’s 50th birthday and trying to pretend like we’re 25 again, even though I’ll probably be in bed at 9:00 pm after day drinking on a boat. 

Feel free to follow along on my IG Stories if you want to follow the chaos. As a side note, I do a ton of free consulting on IG, so if you ever have a question about sales (or anything else for that matter), send me a video DM on IG, and I’ll get right back to you. 

With the long weekend, I know many people probably won’t read this newsletter, but I packed it with some tactical tips, tech and mentality that should help when we all get back in gear on Tuesday.

Enjoy! 

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TACTICAL TIPS: EVERY DETAIL MATTERS

SALES RESOURCES: CRYSTAL KNOWS 

SALES FROM THE STREETS:  FOCUSING ON WHAT WE CAN CONTROL

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TACTICAL TIPS:

With the shift to the virtual/remote world and the majority of our sales calls now over Zoom rather than in person, we’ve lost much of the ability to develop rapport and make connections with clients.

Sales has become a lot more transactional in many ways and the client has more control than they’ve ever had before.  Shutting down a Zoom call is much easier than kicking you out of their office. 

This is why we need to start paying attention to the details since they matter more now than ever. 

For instance, we used to be able to walk into someone’s office and see a picture on their desk of them fishing and make a connection to them with that (if you actually fish). 

Now, most people have virtual backgrounds so it’s hard to make those kinds of connections that used to help us develop some level of rapport. 

That’s why I recommend paying attention to what we put in our background instead. 

Take a look at the image below of my background.  Every single thing in my background has a purpose and is meant to try and relate to almost anyone I meet with.

At least 75% of the time I get on a Zoom call with someone they make a comment or ask about something in my background that they can relate to.

If you don’t have a physical background space like I do, find a spot in your house or apartment to set up a background that includes things that represent you, your interests and your personality.  Then, take a photo of it and use that as your virtual background.

I know this seems small, but like I said, every little detail matters these days.

SALES RESOURCES:  

Keeping with finding ways to relate to people and how every detail matters, I can’t believe more people don’t know about www.crystalknows.com (NOT A SPONSOR)

I’ve been using CrystalKnows for about five years now, and it is a massive cheat code that helps me skip the line and build rapport faster than I’ve ever been able to without it. 

If you know anything about personality profiles like DISC, they help us understand people’s communication styles so we can communicate more effectively with each other. 

Usually, you have to take a test to understand your personality type and its meaning. 

CrystalKnows can figure out someone’s DISC profile and personality without them having to take a test.  

I use the Google Chrome plug in that ties right into Linkedin. With that I can get a personality profile of anyone I’m connected to and it tells me exactly how best to sell to them depending on what stage of the sales process I’m at with them.

There are multiple use cases for this.  The main way I use it is to prep for meetings.  I put the person I’m meeting with into CrystalKNows to see if they are the same as me (High D/Driver).  

If we’re the same, then I don’t really have to alter my approach; I can just be me.  

But if they are high I, S, or C, then I know I need to alter my approach.

Some people like small talk at the beginning of a meeting; others don’t.

Some people like pictures and stories, while others like details and metrics. 

If I understand this coming into the meeting, I can adjust my style and bring the right resources to help me connect with them more than I would otherwise. 

I’ve also taken it to the next level by writing an email, uploading someone’s personality profile from CrystalKnows into ChatGPT, and asking it to re-write the email based on their personality.

I’m pretty sure that when you sign up for CrystalKNows, you get 10 free profile views, and then you have to pay $30/month, but for me, it’s the best $30/month I spend.

If you don’t want to sign up but are curious to see how accurate it is, send me a direct message ([email protected]) and I’ll run your profile through my instance of CrystalKNows and send it back to you.

SALES FROM THE STREETS:  

This weekend is the unofficial last weekend of summer.  

After this weekend, we’re all back to school and work.  

My daughter is going into High School, so we spent this past week getting her ready, which included shopping, a few school orientation sessions, and figuring out the new bus schedule.

This is a totally new school for her where she doesn’t know anyone, so her anxiety is understandably high, and therefore her emotions are all over the place. 

If you’ve ever had to deal with a 13-year-old girl's emotions, you know how challenging this is for everyone involved.

It’s almost impossible to say or do anything right as a parent at this stage. Nearly everything we do either embarrasses her or pisses her off.

That’s why I’m glad I started this morning routine with my daughter at an early age and continue to do it every day with her.  It’s about focusing on what we can control.

For context, when she was 6 years old, my wife and I were getting pretty animated and upset with what was going on politically, and we frequently yelled at the TV based on what we saw on the news. 

I noticed that my daughter was getting angry for no reason and realized it was because she was mirroring what she was seeing with us.  

As soon as I made that connection, I shut off the TV and talked to her about how we shouldn’t worry about what is happening on the TV and how we need to stay focused on what we can control.

So we brainstormed a bit, talked about what we could control, and came up with the acronym E.A.T., which stands for Effort, Attitude, and How We Treat people. 

We can control our effort and how hard we work, our attitude and whether it’s positive or not, and how we treat other people, not how they treat us.

We now have our morning routine where every morning, we have a secret handshake that we do that goes:

What can we control? 

E.A.T

Effort, 

Attitude 

And how we Treat people

Boom Dynamite 

Confidence!!   

It reminds both of us to stay focused and limit the outside influences we can’t do anything about.

This was a good week to remind us all to stay focused on what we can control as we push to the end of the year.

PARTNER SPOTLIGHT: THE BEST DEMAND CONVERSION GUIDE I’VE EVER SEEN

My friends at Chili Piper have put together one of the most impressive demand conversion guides I’ve ever seen. 

They got 57 leaders to give their input on converting demand to buyers. 

Folks like Udi Ledergor 🏳‍🌈, Chief Evangelist, 🔌 Andy Mowat, VP GTM Ops, Brandon Young, CMO and yours truly all gave our insights into how to do this. 

Here are the specifics you’ll see in this guide:
→ The 9 Demand Conversion Principles

→ A Buyer Journey Analysis

→ Metrics, People, and Tools you need

→ Actionable next steps to ID gaps in your framework

→ A market map for the best tools & tech for demand

I can’t stress how much of a “must-read” this is. 

PS - Chili Piper has taken all of this learning and created a brand new GTM Platform, making it way easier to reduce buyer friction and increase demand conversion. 

Check it out here. 

ADDITIONAL WAYS YOU CAN LEVEL UP YOUR SALES GAME 

• The JB Sales Membership is where you’ll get access to my live training, workshops, AMAs and OnDemand catalog so you can level up your sales skills every day!  3000+ Sales pros have already joined. Are you next?

• The industry-leading Make it Happen Monday Podcast where you’ll get insights and inspiration from some of the most interesting and influential people in the world of Sales and business. (this is where you’ll hear the Guy Kawasaki episode on May XYZ)

• The JB Sales YouTube channel with practical tips that you can apply immediately to drive results along with interviews and content that is guaranteed to get you to think differently.